Tuesday, 26 July 2016

SAINTS PRESERVE US

Of Alternate History and Alternative
Reality

My favourite John Lennon lyric is a
throwaway aside in the song ‘Nobody Told Me:’ “Strange days indeed, most peculiar, mama, whoa!” Not only are
there Nazis in the bathroom now, but pocket monsters too.

Last week Ann and I took the highway south,
the top down and the Stones turned up: “Did you ever wake up to find a day that
broke up your mind?” We spent two nights in Calgary
visiting with friends before heading west into the Rockies
to attend a beautifully staged wedding ceremony at a resort in Kananaskis
country. I know I had fun because last Wednesday night I fell over trying to
dance to ‘Mother of Pearl,’ my favourite Roxy Music song, on a balcony. In my
defense, it was after midnight, six beers and 12 cigarettes past my usual
bedtime. And I did not fall over the balcony, and that was good because I
sometimes find great heights as seductive as watching the nightly TV news with
a baseball in my hand.

My lifelong friend Tim was once the recipient
of an unfortunate gift, something akin to a Midas touch of fools’ gold. His
wallet is a Trump Signature model. It’s curved perfectly to his right back
pocket buttock, worked in like the ultimate baseball mitt, and he cannot chisel
the brand label off without wrecking it. I thought he didn’t like me anymore,
never buying me a beer, but some things you just can’t tug out of your pants in
public.

Most restaurants and bars are filled with
television screens providing distraction from your companions and yours and
their personal devices. Thursday night a group of us gathered for dinner and
were glued to video footage of the American Republican Party’s Cleveland convention. The current Mrs. Trump
had already plagiarized Mrs. Obama but 93-per-cent of her speech was original,
and anyway, Hillary had orchestrated the conspiracy of truth (not to be
confused with truthers) and besides, the would-be first family of orange-tinged
buffoons had quickly trotted out a professional ghostwriter patsy who’d
neglected to take proper notes and who was, like: So sorry! Meanwhile the
nominee, FBI patriotic in a blue suit, white shirt and red tie, spittled venom
tempered by the universal A-OK sign, the thumb and index finger forming a zero
or perhaps a puckered hole, ungraciously acquiesced to the will of some of the
people in the party. And, well, Jesus Christ, even a squeegeed douche like Ted
Cruz appeared more dignified and presidential in comparison.

Tim, a political junkie, announced, “Since
he’s the official GOP nominee the White House is now obligated to provide him
with weekly national security briefings.” Our table of eight did not shout a
collective “Fuck!” No, in the muted atmospheric light we were all noir shadowed
Marlon Brandos playing Kurtz in ‘Apocalypse Now:’ “The horror, the horror…” Tim
added reassuringly, “You know he’s going to fucking blab something secret
before November.”

My window on the world is always distorted
by the stained glass of art. The Trump candidacy makes me ponder the plight of
Pink, the alienated, fascist rock star character depicted over four sides of
Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall:’ “Mother, should I build the wall? Mother, should I run
for president? Mother, should I trust the government?” The runaway Trump
machine reminds me too of ‘Watchmen’ the dystopian graphic novel set in 1985 in
an America
in which Richard Nixon is still president. ‘All the King’s Men’ is an American
classic, a Pulitzer Prize winning novel which relates the rise and demise of a
demagogue, a democratic dictator, a “southern diplomat” to lift a phrase from
Chuck Berry.

While I was trying to think of more life-imitates-art
examples at dinner, even profounder analogies, the conversation turned to
Pokemon Go. This time, everybody said “Fuck.” Tim said, “Nintendo’s stock
realized a $7-billion bump.” Somebody else said it may have been closer to
nine. Nobody knew for sure. “And this,” Tim said, “for a free app.” Trump was
on TV. The sound was down, but the vodka and meat shill was probably talking up
trade tariffs.

Ann and I spent two days in Calgary. We walked around
downtown avoiding zombies fixated by the postage stamp screens on their
supercomputer waistband phones. Didn’t we know some polka-dotted pocket monster
rendered in that wretchedly cute Japanese anime comic style was lurking nearby,
waiting to be collected or coached? We left town.

Ann and I arrived in Kananaskis early
Friday morning, too early for check in at the famous lodge, but miracle of
miracles our room was ready. I put my black leather toiletry kit (a high school
graduation present from 1977) in the bathroom. I jogged down the stairs to the
lobby from the second storey, anxious for a cigarette. Beyond the shade of the
not really rustic porte cochere and behind a chainsaw statue of a grizzly bear
I found an ashtray. A guest services fellow dressed in black with an earphone
plugged into his head walked over and asked me if I was Pokemon hunting. I
said, “Excuse me, I’m smoking.”

The hotel boy was half my age and twice as
tall as me, but stooped as if every doorway in the world only allowed for cats.
He told me there were Pokemon at the main entry, that I was literally standing
on one, and that there was a herd of others around the pond in the centre of
the ersatz village. More lurked in the trees surrounding the resort. He said
that Pokemon were around every landmark, everywhere, marketing monsters allied
with Google maps. People were getting hurt but going to church too, the
mentally ill would be cured. It was all good, mostly, he thought. I nodded
politely and then pretended to be absorbed by the bear’s butt; I’ve been an ass
most of my life.

The evening before the wedding I met a
fellow guest outside the pub who was well into his second double gin-and-tonic.
He physically resembled our former prime minister. He alluded that the United States and by extension Canada was run
by an unelected cabal of rich and powerful figures. “It’s always about the
money,” he said. “Follow the money.” Trump, he figured, understood this while
the Clintons
and their ilk were just compliant puppets.

An otherwise nice guy, I thought, but what’s the
point of having a discussion with a loon? It would’ve been simpler talking
hockey. I looked past him and watched a posse of Pokemon hunters follow their
phones off a paved path into a stand of trees. Whoa, I thought, reality here in
the Rockies must be pretty drab. I studied the random rock and runoff patterns streaking the monumental sheer grey face of MountKidd:
too mundane for some. Night was falling but not the sky. Not yet.